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The Sunderland trio’s brand of guitar pop is nowhere near as jerky as the style that the Northeast has made its own. Imagine these two bands’ respective journeys to a London gig. Where The Futureheads hurtle down the M1, Field Music are content to amble along B roads, stopping and picking up hitch-hikers with flowers in their hair. The new material they air tonight thankfully steps things up a gear or ten. It’s decidedly punkier, as if they broke down en route and got a replacement spark plug from those other North Easterners.
Their eponymous debut, released last August on Memphis Industries was largely overlooked, so it’s fair dos they’re getting a worthy airing here at a packed KOKO. Compared to their more celebrated friends, their sound is MOR and hence as exciting as Kele from Bloc Party in an interview about his own goddamn band. But comparisons are just as annoying as scenes and labels, so dismiss them and you’ll discover enough psychedelic inventiveness, especially in the new stuff, to give them mainstream appeal. Ross and Jaff from The Futureheads who are here tonight, up at the front, would certainly agree.
If you thought it was packed for the support act, the people-to-space ratio was going to swing much more in the people favour. Many are hardcore lounge poppers, all eager to be carried through each note of Stereolab’s sixteen year history.
Formed by Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane after they attended a gig together in London in the late 80s, Stereolab was the prototype ‘post-rock’ outfit. Early material was essentially krautrock drone, i.e. simple, repetitve morose keyboard and string riffs. Throughout the years they crafted their aural onslaught by chucking in trombone and French horn, playing out the ever more complicated rhythms and thus creating a musical entity with no set agenda and direction, and therein lay the excitement and grounds for their mid-90s peak popularity, culminating in Sadier’s reluctant acceptance into mainstream by way of guest vocals on Blur’s 'Parklife'.
Sadier looks tonight the perfect disco diva, resplendent in knee-length peach dress but she doesn’t act it. Where is the presence fitting of a frontwoman of such an avant-garde ensemble? Her dance moves are flat and forced so that the grainy black and white footage of some bygone Communist era projected onto the stage is more attention-grabbing. But it has purpose to, to remind us of the political side of early Stereolab musings.
The entire show follows the script; it’s almost too rehearsed. In short, Stereolab simmer but don’t boil: the keyboard drones plateau and stay put; there are no sudden lop-sided chord changes and nothing to ruin the perfectly laquered looks many of the diehards are sporting tonight, like ‘The Groop’ of old would have done. “Ooh it’s good to rock out”, announces Sadier after a punchy ‘Miss Modular’. “What’s the matter with you now? You always used to rock out”, is one fan’s despondant reponse.
Set closer is ‘We’re Not Adult Orientated’, triumph of 1993’s record 'The Groop Played ‘Space Age Bachelor Music’. Here on the balcony, people are enjoying it in typical lounge style but a glance downwards sees the up-for-it types having a disco. Disco + lounge = Stereolab. Can’t really complain then.
